The demand for tracking laptops and other mobile equipment is very high in many organizations, especially financial organizations and the federal government. Tracking is performed for many purposes including to prevent theft, for inventory, and to prevent the unauthorized access or transport of data from secure areas. For example, many financial institutions require employees and visitors to record their laptop serial numbers when entering and exiting the premises in an attempt to provide physical monitoring of laptops.
Some current equipment tracking systems use serial numbers to track their equipment. For example, large organizations that provide mobile devices, such as laptops, for their employees manual record serial numbers of the devices, for example, when the employees enter or exit the site. Some organizations are looking at passive RFID tags to automate this procedure. For example, passive RFID tags are affixed to the laptops, and RFID tag readers are installed at various locations of a building, such as at exits/entrances of a building or at other locations in a building. These tracking systems allow the equipment to be tracked even when turned off. For example, as the laptops pass in the vicinity of the readers, the serial numbers of the tags are read. For each reading of a tag, the location and timestamp are recorded, so the laptop can be tracked. In addition to laptops, other types of electronic equipment or non-electronic equipment can be tracked in the same manner by affixing RFID tags to the equipment.
These type of tracking systems are limited in that the equipment can only be tracked at the locations of the readers. Thus, for example, if someone carried a laptop through an exit with no reader, there would be no tracking data for that event. As an alternative, active RFID tags may be used that have a greater range than passive RFID tags, so readers may be used to cover a larger area. However, active RFID tags are bulkier than passive RFID tags and are also much more expensive.
Many electronic devices already come equipped with wireless transceiver capability, but this wireless transceiver capability cannot be leveraged for tracking the electronic devices. For example, electronic devices that are typically tracked, such as laptops, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc., typically utilize a wireless network card to access a network or another device. For example, laptops, many cell phones and PDAs include a WiFi network interface and/or a BLUETOOTH interface for accessing a network and/or another device wirelessly. However, when these electronic devices are turned off, the WiFi network interface and/or a BLUETOOTH interface are also turned off. Thus, these wireless interfaces cannot be used to send or receive signals for tracking when the devices are turned off.